I believe I have a
scientific argument
(Elitzur, 1989, 1996) in favor of one of the rival parties. Unfortunately,
this party is interactionist dualism, which I dislike most. Indeed my
argument comes with the expected penalty on this option, namely,
entailing violation of a very basic physical principle. Being a physicist,
this violation upsets me most.

My (possibly confused)
understanding of it basically boils down to: if dualists are wrong and
non-dualists can't explain why dualists
are wrong, then non-dualistic logic must be incomplete, so (somehow)
dualists were right all along. His argument largely hinges on the
presupposition
that qualia exist, a topic as controversial and hard to
pin down as consciousness. He further proposes that consciousness is
"the totality of
our qualia" (!) which, if true, probably means we should forget about
conscious robots. As expected, Elitzur's
dualism wreaks
havoc with the laws of physics, starting with basic laws
like conservation of energy and momentum. The paper is destined to
become a book chapter and provides some
interesting reading (look for the Zombie bafflement Turing Test). I
expect it will also stir up renewed interest in the idea of dualism.

For a related look at the major problems facing new advocates of
dualism and how they might be resolved, have a look at Giving Dualism
its Due, a forthcoming paper for the Australasian Journal of Philosophy
by William G. Lycan of the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.